Tuesday, October 6, 2015

4 Most Common Password Cracking Methods

Hackers use many methods to hack your account or get your personal data. Today I
will share 4 Most commonly used methods used to crack password and some solution to get secured.

1. Brute Force Attack

Any password can be cracked using Brute-force attack. Brute-force
attacks try every possible combinations of numbers, letters and special
characters until the right password is match. Brute-force attacks can
take very long time depending upon the complexity of the password. The
cracking time is determined by the speed of computer and complexity of
the password.

Solution : Use long and
complex passwords. Try to use combination of upper and lowercase
letters along with numbers and special characters like @#$& etc. Brute-force attack will take hundreds or
even thousands of years to crack such complex and long passwords.

Example: Passwords like "iforgot" or "yourpassword" can be cracked easily whereas computer will take years to crack passwords like "aN@42lL00"

2. Social Engineering

Social engineering is process of making someone to trust you and
get information from them. For example, Sometime hackers call the victim pretending to be from bank and
ask for their credit cards details. Social Engineering can be used to
get someone password, to get bank credentials or any personal
information.

Solution : If someone
tries to get your personal or bank details ask them few questions. Make
sure the person calling you is legit. Never ever give your credit card
details on phone.

3. Phishing

Phishing is the most easiest and popular hacking method used by hackers
to get someone account details. In Phishing attack hacker send fake page
of real website like facebook, gmail to victim. When someone login
through that fake page his details is send to the hacker. This fake
pages can be easily created and hosted on free web-hosting sites.

Solution : Phishing
attacks are very easy to avoid. The URL of this phishing pages are
different from the real one.

Example : URL of phishing page of
facebook might look like facbook.com (As you can see "e" is missing). Always make sure that websites URL is correct.

4. Guessing

This seems silly but this can easily help you to get someones password
within seconds. If hacker knows you, he can use information he knows
about you to guess your password. Hacker can also use combination of
Social Engineering and Guessing to acquire your password.

Solution : Don't use
your name, surname, phone number or birth-date as your password. Try to
avoid creating password that relates to you. Create complex and long
password with combination of letters and numbers.